Trends in international architecture

Changing a single item in a traditional building method will not ensure an
improved response to the environment, or even an equally satisfactory one. Yet
change is inevitable, and new forms and materials will be used, as has been the
case throughout history. Often the convenience of modern forms and materials
makes their use attractive in the short term. In the eagerness to become modern,
many people in the Tropics have abandoned their traditional age-old solutions to
the problems presented by the local climate and instead have adopted what is
commonly labeled "international architecture," based on the use of
high-technology materials such as the reinforced-concrete frame and the glass
wall. But a 3 x 3-m glass wall in a building exposed to solar radiation on a
warm, clear tropical day will let in approximately 2000 kilocalories per hour.
To maintain the microclimate of a building thus exposed within the human comfort
zone, two tons of refrigeration capacity are required. Any architect who makes a
solar furnance of his building and compensates for this by installing a huge
cooling machine is approaching the problem inappropriately and we can measure
the inappropriateness of his attempted solution by the excess number of
kilocalories he uselessly introduces into the building. Furthermore, the vast
majority of the inhabitants of the Tropics are industrially underdeveloped and
cannot afford the luxury of high-technology building materials or
energy-intensive systems for cooling. Although traditional architecture is
always evolving and will continue to absorb new materials and design concepts,
the effects of any substitute material or form should be evaluated before it is
adopted. Failure to do so can only result in the loss of the very concepts that
made the traditional techniques appropriate.

Only a scientific approach to the evaluation of such new developments can
save the architecture of the Tropics and Subtropics. The thoughtless application
of modern methods in this region is seldom successful. A thorough understanding
of the climatic environment and developments based thereon is essential for
appropriate solutions. Although traditional architecture was evolved intuitively
over long periods, it was based primarily on scientifically valid concepts. The
modern academic world of architecture does not emphasize the value of
investigating and applying concepts scientifically and, therefore, has no
respect for vernacular architecture. Now is the time to bridge the gap between
these widely different approaches.

All traditional solutions should be evaluated scientifically before they are
discarded or substitutes proposed. The phenomena of the microclimate must be
analyzed and new building materials, methods, and designs must be tested until
the complex relationships among buildings, microclimate, and human beings are
fully understood. Fortunately, agriculture is perhaps even more intimately
affected by the microclimate than architecture, and agricultural scientists have
long made careful observations of the climate near the ground and in small
localities. Their findings are available to those interested in tropical and
subtropical architecture.

Another science to which architecture is indebted is aerodynamics. The
methods of investigating airflow around the wings and bodies of aircraft are now
being used to study airflow through, over, and around buildings. Scaled and
full-size models can be tested in wind tunnels to determine the effect of the
size, location, and arrangement of openings on the airflow through individual
buildings, as well as the nature of wind patterns and forces between groups of
buildings.

Today more attention is being given to the relationship between climate and
architecture, and several building research organizations are beginning to
examine this relationship.

Various disciplines, including aerodynamics and meteorology, provide an
impressive stock of facts that are extremely useful to architecture. The
architect is responsible for interpreting these facts and applying them to his
designs. In this respect, he resembles the attending physician, who, though
using the expertise of the physiologist, radiologist, or bacteriologist, is the
only person who can actually undertake the treatment of a
case.